


Homecoming

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, M/M, Season/Series 11, Self-Hatred, talk of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 16:17:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5011360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>11.02 coda with lots of regret, angst, mythos, make ups, and a bit of making out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

“ _Help me.”_

They manage to get Cas seated in one of the library’s comfier chairs, dragging it back upright from where it had been kicked over during the Stynes' impromptu renovations. Sam rushes to get Cas some water and bandages for his still-bleeding wounds as Dean hovers anxiously next to him.

“Cas? Cas, buddy, talk to me,” he pleads, hand glued to Cas' upper arm. Cas' face remains drawn and drained looking as he moans in pain.

“It's the curse. It's getting worse,” he grits out, body tensed as if waiting for another invisible blow to hit.

Quickly, Dean scans his body, taking account of the number of wounds he can see. “Was this—?” he starts to ask, but Cas completes the thought for him.

“Angels,” he says, like a keening prayer. “They blame me for Metatron's disappearance,” he explains, sounding more exhausted by the word. Sam returns just then with some wet cloths and a glass of water. Dean helps Cas lift the glass to take a sip. He doesn't even know if water will help Cas now that he's mojo'd up again, but it makes Dean feel better, at least. Sam passes Dean the damp cloth so he can wipe down Cas' gritty and sweaty brow.

“They thought... They thought I was protecting him,” Cas reveals, sounding bewildered and so, so  _sad_. Dean _really_ wants to kill a dick right about now.

“Well, shows that they know shit all, doesn't it,” Dean growls, tense and angry with no one to take it out on. When he catches Cas' gaze though, so weary and resigned, Dean lets the anger sink out of him. The Mark is  _gone_ , he reminds himself. Time to prove it.

He takes a deep breath to steady himself.

“They wanted me you give you up,” Cas whispers, glancing between Dean, who's kneeling next to Cas' chair, and Sam, who stands in front of it. “But I wouldn't,” he insists, with such a forceful determination that it can't be good for those chest wounds. Cas winces through the rush. “I wouldn't,” he repeats softer, but no less sincere.

Sam offers him a comforting smile. “We know, Cas.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees shakily, “You've always got our backs.” Dean forces to his face a weak smile, trying not to let the memory of the last conversation he had with Cas flood his mind. Dean squeezes Cas' arm once before letting it fall limply to his side, and stands up. Cas' loyalty has always meant a lot to him, but now it's up to him to work to feel like he actually  _deserves_  it.

 

***

 

For the next day and a half, Cas holes up in one of the corners of the library they've managed to clean and set back up, hunched over a stack of books when he can manage it, and collapsed back in a slouch when he can't. In lieu of an actual cure, time away from the world seems to be best medicine to keep the worst of the curse's symptoms at bay. Or, at least the self-punishment acts as a bit of a psychosomatic remedy. Cas _is_  an honourary Winchester, after all.

Sam prevents Dean from hovering around Cas nervously by sending him off to bed, berating him with  _logic_ of all things that he's kinda been awake for three days straight.

Dean petulantly promises to only nap for an hour at most, but ends up crashing for a good ten straight because sometimes his body knows better than his heart. When he wakes up, he searches the kitchen and war room briefly to find out that Sam has (deservedly) crashed, too. Dean contemplates for a second running to the Impala and driving away in no particular direction to avoid facing the object of his guilt and worry, but he takes a deep breath and steels himself, and steps into the library to find Cas just as he left him.

“Hey Cas,” Dean says softly, voice still a bit hoarse with sleep as he approaches the table Cas is seated at. “How are you feelin'?”

Cas raises he head in greeting before it drops down again, out of exhaustion more than indifference Dean would guess by the slump of his shoulders. “Dean, I'm—”

“I swear to God if you say you're fine I'm gonna put that nice new tie of yours through a goddamn shredder,” Dean interrupts, as he pulls out the chair next to Cas' and sits down beside him.

Despite how utterly wrecked and ruined he looks, Cas manages a small smile. “I wasn't aware the bunker had one,” he deadpans with some effort. A rough cough follows, and Cas hunches over, wincing in renewed pain as the movement re-opens one of his wounds.

Dean's hand jolts to his friend's shoulder to steady him. Cas' face is pinched in pain as Dean's twists with worry. “Still a smart ass even when you're bleeding through you're shirt,” Dean offers with a strained chuckle to try to ease them both. He helps Cas sit back up straighter, hand lingering on the warm shoulder. “There's the Cas I know and l—” he starts and then stops, suddenly absurdly self-conscious. Dean swallows thickly, the word  _'love'_ caught in his throat like it has been so many times before. He doesn't want to ruin their reunion by bearing his soul and having it fall apart.

Just another day in the life of Dean Winchester.

He lets his hand on Cas' shoulder awkwardly fall away. “Um. Yeah,” he finishes lamely, as his heart pounds furiously in his chest.

Cas grimaces, ignorant of Dean's internal struggle because, as Dean understands, it can be pretty hard to keep track of this kind of stuff when your body feel likes it's collapsing in on itself. “I think this is one of the few times it actually  _is_  worse than it looks, unfortunately,” he concedes, voice rougher than ever.

“This is all from Rowena's attack dog spell?” Dean asks to confirm what Cas had alluded to last night. He doesn't remember it being _this_  bad the last time he witnessed it being used. Then again, Dean also killed those afflicted, anyway. Guess he never really took the time to find out what happened when the spell ran its course.

“Yes,” Cas nods, shoulders tensed as another wave of pain wreaks through him. “I don't think it was... meant for angels.” He frowns in recollection. “When it hit me, I could  _feel_  the curse burst through my grace and coil around it like a parasite. It's as if it's using it to feed itself, and grow stronger.”

_Of course_ it is, because that's just their kind of  _great_  luck, Dean thinks. “Fucking hell,” he mutters, wholly at a loss. “I'm sorry, man.”

Cas shakes his head, expression darkening inwardly. “No, I'm sorry,” he half-growls in self-chastisement. “I shouldn't have come, I know this, but I didn't know what else to do, Dean, I—”

“What are you talking about, of course you should be here!” Dean immediately balks. “What do you think—” he rushes to insist, because the feeling of  _Cas should be here_  is one of the most familiar, insistent things Dean knows, before he realises with a jolt how much of a fucking blind asshole he's being.

_Right, there's the whole thing where you tried to_ kill him _, Dean_ , he thinks bitterly to himself. “Well, no, I know what I deserve, you should be fucking pissed at me—”

Cas' face breaks. “Dean, no—”

But Dean cuts him off, because the train of self-hatred is one out of control steel death machine. “But I was coming to help you, Cas,” he promises desperately, “before all this shit with the Darkness and Crowley fucked those plans up. I promise. 'Was driving fast as I could even though I had no idea where you were.”

Dean doesn't know what kind of consolation that is, exactly, but he hopes it's enough to make Cas believe him, to  _trust_  him again.

The thing is, and what Dean can't make himself believe yet, is that Castiel never stopped.

“I'm dangerous, Dean,” he warns, voice aching with the heavy sense of resignation. “This spell—it could make me hurt you.”

“Won't be anything I don't got coming to me,” Dean bites back, but the anger is all directed towards himself.

Cas sighs. His breath is laboured, but still his voice is soft when he places a hand on the curve of Dean's closest knee and says with sincerity, “I have no desire for vengeance, Dean. I know that wasn't you.”

Dean drops his gaze to the simple sight of a friend's comforting touch. It would be funny, how foreign the action is to him in his lifetime of violence, except where it's not funny at all. Cas' palm is warm even through the fabric of Dean's jeans.

Dean's had so many dreams, awake and sleeping, of places those hands could roam, but even the reality he gets is still too overwhelming. The tang of salt stings his throat as he swallows, thinking that even if this is all he ever gets, it's far more than he deserves.

He smiles, a small, sad thing, as he  _remembers_. His voice cracks, because he can't help it. Every other part of him is fractured already. “The thing is, though, Cas, it kinda was.”

But Cas remains unmoved in his belief. He leans in closer, though their chairs are so close already. “You weren't in full control of yourself. The Mark was acting much like the poison of the curse that is currently infecting  _me,_ ” he insists.

“How can you say that? I hurt you and Sam and—” Dean shakes his head, face twisted in disgust and scorn as the memories rush in. “I shot a  _kid_ , Cas. In cold blood. And this guy—Rudy—I just killed a guy trying to _help_  people.”

“It was a tragedy. But you weren't  _you_ , Dean,”

“No?” Dean laughs hollowly, the sour tang in his throat blossoming into a burn. “Then why do I remember the way my hand felt around my gun? How good it felt to have blood caked beneath my fingernails?”

“But you don't feel that way now,” Cas says, more of a statement then question, and the _surety_  of it makes Dean's anger start to deflate. Cas' unwavering faith in him had some horrible consequences the last time they were here, in this room, but Dean can't help but be desperate for the benediction it provides him. He takes a deep breath, and lets the soothing assurance of Cas' presence wash over him.

He bows his head, and is surprised to find that Cas' hand is still there, resting calmly on his denim clad knee. “Doesn't matter,” he says, shaking his heat in solemn defeat.

There's a beat of companionable silence before Cas says, “It's not easy to forgive yourself, I know. Perhaps forgiveness is the wrong word.”

Dean raises his head, frowning in confusion at the turn the conversation has taken. “What?”

Cas' hand slips from Dean's knee, and Dean tries not to shiver at the loss. Cas clasps both his hands together in his own lap, as if trying to ground them there, to chain himself to the chair in an act of penance. Dean wants to reach out, but doesn't know how, and isn't that just the saddest part of it.

“I know how impossible the idea of absolution is when you can still feel the taint of your sins so deep in your skin it feels as if your body is made out of them.”

Cas' voice is quiet, but each word rings out sharply in the silence of the library. The air around them always seems to be charged like this, full of static electricity, ready to spark.

“I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself fully for what  _I've_  done,” Cas continues, shadow on his face growing darker with every syllable. “To you. To Sam. To—to Hannah. To so many of my brothers and sisters.”

“Cas, that wasn't—”

“Ah, but I remember, too,” Cas lifts his head and smiles at him sadly. His eyes roam Dean's face for a moment, as if searching for something. Dean doesn't know if he finds it, but after a beat he says something that shocks all the breath out of Dean's body: “I remember being forced to kill hundreds upon thousands of facsimiles of you.”

Cas' brow is creased in a a deep frown, as he remembers. “Naomi, she knew my weaknesses too well. She had me practice, so when the time came, her order to kill would be obeyed.”

Dean swallows thickly, as he remembers, too, and a realisation dawns on him. “The crypt. That was what happened in the crypt.”

For Dean, it was literally another lifetime ago, before the Mark, before the blade, before the black. And yet, he can feel the phantom stinging on his face, taste the ghost of blood on his lips as he remembers the moment he carved his heart out of his chest and laid it bare between them, staining damp stone floor forever.

“Yes,” Cas confirms, and then his mouth twists wryly. “Or, rather, what didn't happen, but  _did_  happen thousands of times before my eyes in Heaven.”

Dean closes his eyes, because it's too much to take in at once. Suddenly, the way Cas had been acted for the months leading up to that dreadful night, the way he acted after... It makes a horrible kind of sense. Cas had nearly killed Dean, the  _real_ Dean, and after seeing so many versions of the same scenario where he had been forced to follow through, he was  _afraid_. Dean knows intimately what it feels like to be a ghost in your own skin, to fear yourself because you know longer know who you  _are_ , as everything you had thought you knew has been stolen.

“I'm sorry, Cas,” he says, but feels pathetic that it's all he can offer. “I had no idea.”

Cas' gaze finally meets his, dark bags under his eyes even more pronounced under the orange light of the library, and under the weight of all the history contained between these walls, between their two bodies that can't seem to decide what their orbits are.

“You were never supposed to,” he says sadly, resigned to the doom he thinks he deserves. The sight of it makes Dean ache, in sympathy, in solidarity, but it also makes him want to _fight_ it.

“You didn't kill me, though,” he impresses, and as he hears himself say it, he almost wants to laugh at the hypocrisy that he can't listen to his own advice. “Remember  _that_.”

“Oh, I remember. Too much, Dean. I remember too much.”

Dean deflates, sudden surge of feeling punched out of him again. He should've known better than to think it would ever be that  _easy_.

“I'm sorry.”

Cas huffs out through his nose, and turns his whole body to stare at Dean thoughtfully. “You're not supposed to tell me that. I'm supposed to say that to  _you,_ ” he says, almost incredulous. He takes a breath. “And I am, Dean. Sorry. I'm sorry for that and everything else. For everything you witnessed and so much that you didn't.”

A platitude threatens to slip out on the tip of Dean's tongue, but he can tell it isn't the right moment. He watches Cas with baited breath, because he can _feel_  the static charge building up again.

“And I will never be able to forget. And yet,” Cas pauses, frowns, and then lets his face relax when he looks down at his right hand, rested on the arm rest of his chair next to Dean, hand so close to Dean's own. The proximity seems to act as a reassurance rather than a defeat at the distance, because Dean thinks he sees the corner of Cas' mouth quirk up in a minute smile. “I must learn to live with myself. There are some days when the memories come a little softer, less like some immeasurable weight collapsed upon me, and more like something I can hold.”

Cas hesitates for a moment, hand caught in midair, before he takes he leap. It comes down to cover Dean's own, forgotten loosely in his lap. Dean move's his thumb to grasp the fingers that curl around him. “Some memories are still too raw, too volatile to touch, but I am getting better at handling them,” Cas continues, voice raw not from the curse, but from something else entirely, a different kind of arcane magic.

“Forgiveness is maybe the wrong word, for I don't forgive myself my own sins. But I do—I do allow myself to move on. Or, I'm trying,” he squeezes Dean's hand, before he moves to pull away.

But Dean isn't ready for that yet. He take's Cas hand between both of his, holding it there in his lap. Cas' hand is too warm and too dry, skin rough and chapped, but the feeling of it is still something akin to perfect against Dean's own skin. “I don't know if I can even do that, Cas,” Dean admits quietly, afraid for himself, for _both_  of them. “It's all—God, it's all so fucked up.”

Cas smiles, then, eyes tired but brimming with something hopeful, something kind.

“Well,” he says. “I'm also familiar with that, too.”


	2. Chapter 2

With little leads on Cas' affliction, the discussion quickly turns to the other, big looming threat in the room. And, you know, in the world at large.

“ _Έρεβος,_ ” Cas whispers when Dean describes his encounter with the Darkness and everything that went down with it, from its release to its rebirth as a baby. “The child of Chaos has returned.”

Intrigued by Cas' reaction, Dean leans against the table top and asks, “What do you know about it?”

“Very little,” Cas admits. “Not much more than what human myth remembers of it. The Darkness was already locked away by the time I was created.”

“Death said that Lucifer—that God made Lucifer the first bearer of the Mark.”

Cas nods. “That would make sense; he was once God's favourite.”

“He said that the reason the Mark is so...  _poisonous_ , is because it's—it  _was_ the only thing keeping the Darkness at bay,” Dean confides, still reeling, is he's honest, from Death's revelation and subsequent, well,  _death_. Christ, that'll come to bite them in the ass quick, too.

“Erebus was not in itself  _evil_ ,” Cas explains, interrupting Dean's train of thought.

Dean half-chuckles. “Kinda  _felt_  evil.”

“It's Darkness.  _Pure_ darkness, I mean. The total absence of light.”

“Yeah...” Dean drawls. “that's still not sounding like a good thing,”

“It's not,” Cas concedes. “But it's not  _bad_  either, it just...  _is_.”

Dean frowns, not understanding. “Then why'd God lock it away?”

“Because by definition it could not be controlled,” Cas says solemnly, “and God was vain as much as He was powerful. The only way to control it was to get rid of it.”

“So you're saying it's just wreaking havoc now it's loose again because it's just joy ridin' free?” Dean asks in disbelief. “The Leviathans kinda were into that too, and they were planning to  _eat_  everyone.” With the Darkness munching down on souls apparently now, too, Dean thinks they're actually pretty much  _exactly_ the same. He feels a disturbing rush of disgust and guilt.

“I'm saying, I don't know that it's...  _purposeful_ , in the same way,” Cas continues cryptically.

Dean blinks. “Huh?”

“The Darknesses existed before any of God's creations did. Before the Earth, before me, before humanity. This—all of this—evolved and grew without ever knowing it. Our world has no natural immunity, so to speak.”

Dean's no billion years old angel, but he's still pretty smart, no matter what he says sometimes. He starts putting two and two together. “So you're saying... it's like when you don't get chicken pox as a kid, and then you're exposed as an adult...”

“You're going to get very sick,” Cas finishes.

Dean leans back in his chair. “Well, fuck.”

“So, what,” he says after a beat, as a new idea dawns on him. “Does that mean I'm... immune, somehow? Because I had the Mark?”

Cas frowns in contemplation for a moment, before agreeing, “It might.”

“She said...,” Dean tries to explain of his weird as fuck encounter before he woke up in a field of flowers of all things. “When it talked to me, she said that she would never hurt me. Because we were  _bound_ , or whatever.”

Dean feels immediately self-conscious using that word, and not just because it's with _Cas_ , whom he also knows he also shares a weird connection with ever since he raised him from the Pit. It's just, in Dean's experience, primordial entities saying they're bound to you and you to them is never anything good. Cas being the exception, of course, but it's not like the good parts came easy, either.

“Maybe...” Cas muses.

“What?”

“Maybe Death had it wrong. Maybe the Mark isn't a lock—or not _just_ a lock. Maybe it's also the key.”

Cas  _really_  has been spending too much time around Winchesters, Dean thinks with a hint of amusement.

“Wait, what?”

“The Mark is what God designed to act as a sealant on the prison he set for the Darkness, yes? Which means the power it must wield...”

Dean nods. “It's strong stuff, yeah,” he says, knowing first hand how much that is also a  _tremendous_  understatement. He sets his jaw and steadfastly refuses to look down or touch his forearm, to confirm the Mark is really still gone. Instead, he clenches his fist, and drives to drive the dark thoughts away.

“It has to be comparable to that of the Darkness itself, if it could stand to hold. I think...” Cas continues on, “I think my Father might have used some of the Darkness'  _own power_  in the power he gave the Mark.”

“So you're saying, what? The Mark is like a  _vaccine?_ ” Dean wonders. “Jenny McCarthy's gonna love that,” he huffs.

“Essentially, I guess, yes,” Cas says, ignoring Dean's terrible joke. “That the Mark is tied to the Darkness because it  _is_  the Darkness, or part of it.”

“Okay... so it had to be put on someone, why?”

“To channel the power. The bearer of the Mark would basically be... a vessel.”

Ugh, of course. “God and his vessels, Jesus,” Dean groans.

And now it's Cas' turn for a terrible joke. “Jesus wasn't a vessel, he was a prophet.”

“Haha,” Dean pretends to laugh, thought inwardly he's fucking delighted that Cas feels well enough for the moment to joke with him. He tries not to worry how long the reprieve will last. “For immortal beings you guys sure do love messing around in our fragile meat suits. You got a fetish or somethin'?” he flings back without thinking, but Cas is a shrewd and clever challenger.

He smirks. “Are you asking me personally or for me to speak for all celestial entities?”

Sam, the blessed brother that he is, takes this perfect moment to walk back in and join them. “So, you got anything?” he asks, jolting Dean and Cas out of their weird, end of the world inspired flirting.

“Uh, not really,” Dean deflects, trying to shake out the heated energy that was building up in him under the presence of Cas' affectionate gaze and smile. But then he remembers the actual conversation they'd been having. “But maybe?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Thanks, that really cleared it up for me.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to the club. Cas here thinks the Darkness is less evil than Leviathans, but more dangerous,” Dean sums up.

“That's even less helpful,” Sam frowns, crossing his arms over his chest in concern.

“It's sort of a start, actually,” Dean defends, despite his earlier doubt. God, he's got it bad for Cas, hasn't he. “Ever heard of the Chaos myth?”

“Of course,” Sam nods. “Ancient Greek creation story.”

“We think Chaos and the Darkness are the same thing. Or—what was it that you called it, Cas?” Dean turns back to his friend.

“Erebus. The child of Chaos, along with Nyx,” Cas explains. “It's all a trinitarian aspect to what is essentially all the same entity, much like in some Christian ideologies: Chaos, the Darkness, and the Night.”

Dean chuckles. “That where God got the idea from, then?”

“It was the first, then came God. Or, as He was also known, Aether and Hemera: the Air and the Day.”

Sam mulls over this for a moment, before frowning again. “But wait—we've _met_ Greek gods, and they didn't seem to think much of God and Heaven, if I remember right.”

“You've met the  _Olympians,_ ” Cas points out. “This is much older.”

“Older than Death,” Dean adds ominously.

Cas nods. “Exactly.”

All three of them take a beat for this new knowledge to sink in, before Cas breaks the silence with a restrained his. Dean's brow creases with worry.

“Speaking of death... Cas, you should really lie down or something. I feel like you're gonna keel over at any moment.”

“I'm fine,” Cas brushes him off, and attempts to sit up and pull a book towards him that he'd been rifling through last night.

“What did I say about that word, huh?”

“I'm  _perfectly adequate,_ ” Cas bites out testily.

Dean narrows his eyes, not amused. “Okay, but you're also a terrible liar. You're  _shivering_  and it's like seventy-two degrees in here.”

“It'll pass.”

“Yeah, once you actually take a  _break_  it will.”

“Dean,” Cas sighs.

“ _Cas,_ ” Dean glares.

“Oh my God,  _both_  of you are pathetic,” Sam interjects, fed up with both repressed men before him. He sighs, and turns to his friend to ask, “Cas, just let Dean take care of you, please?”

Cas manages to hold his stubborn ground for a moment, but then he sighs in turn, and gives up. Though he ignores Dean's ensuing smirk of victory. “I would say _'fine'_ but I've been banned from using it.”

“Oh, haha, very funny—”

“Dean,” Sam chastises, and then turns back to their resident patient. “Cas?”

Cas looks between the brothers, looking more exhausted than ever now that he's admitted to it. “Where can I rest, then?”

Dean claps him on the shoulder and stands up, happy to have something to do again. Someone to take care of.

“Let's focus on getting you on your feet, first, Captain Smartass.”

 

***

 

Of course they end up in Dean's room, because it just so happens to be the closest to the library. That's  _mostly_  the whole reason , but Dean's not gonna examine that too closely just yet. 

“You know Sam and I are grateful for your help, but you know, this is _our_ mess,” Dean says, opening the door and leading Cas inside. “You don't need to run yourself ragged again to help us clean it up. Again.” 

“I don't want help you because I  _need_  to, Dean,” Cas protests, as he lets Dean guide him to the bed. He sits down awkwardly atop the bedspread, not moving yet to take off his shoes or coat. “I  _want_  to. I want to be useful to you.” 

“I don't give a crap if you're  _useful_  to us, Cas, what the fuck?” Dean starts, and then shakes his head when he sees Cas tense at the force of his reply. He offers a small smile and sits down next to him. “I mean, don't get me wrong, you're great in a fight, and the angel of the Lord thing comes with some awesome party tricks,” Dean explains, and then drops his gaze with a faint flush. “But I like you for, well,  _you._ That part's way more awesome.” 

“That's kind of you to say, but—” 

Dean sighs, heavily, suddenly just as exhausted as Cas too looks. “Look, Cas, I'm not—I ain't being kind,” he chuckles mirthlessly. “I'm not being  _polite_ , or  _nice_. Being nice isn't really my thing, if you've ever noticed.” 

Cas considers him with wide, earnest blue eyes. “That's not true.” 

Dean swallows thickly, and tries not to read into that one. “Well true or false that's not want I'm tryna be,” he shrugs. “I'm just trying to tell the truth, Cas. Be honest for once in my goddamned life, because I know I've sucked at that too.”   
“If you have, then so have I.” 

“Yeah,” Dean snorts, bumping his shoulder into Cas'. “It's something none of us is very good at.”  

The corners of Cas' mouth perk up. “Perhaps we should practice more.” 

It's meant as a light joke, Dean knows, but he can't help acknowledge the truth at the heart of it, too. “I'm trying,” he promises, and then takes the natural pause that follows to look around his room. It's just as he'd left it earlier that morning, and even before that, the last time him and Sam were home here, pretending just maybe everything would be okay. There are still stacks of lore books on his desk about cursed tattoos and biblical symbols. Dean doesn't know if he wants to just put them back away or burn the fuck out of them out of spite.   

His picture of his mom is back by his lamp, the first thing he did when he stumbled in last night, barely awake. But he couldn't bring himself to go to sleep here without being able to look over and see her face to remind him he's still alive.

Finally, his gaze falls back to Cas.   

Cas, who's still  _here_ , after everything. Who's been tortured and beaten and cursed in the last few days, some of it by Dean's own treacherous hands. And there's no way Dean will ever forgive himself for that, no matter what kind of bargains he can make with his conscience about the pull of the Mark. But yet here Cas still is, after everything, a solid presence at Dean's side, happy to accept whatever Dean gives him. Dean feels like absolute shit that he doesn't have much, but... He takes a deep breath.   

He does have this. 

“And I guess what I'm trying to say is that... I just want you here, man. Good or bad, human or juiced up, I just... Always want you here.” He pauses, and gives himself a moment to bail or pass out before he admits his most guarded secret. Here goes nothing.   

“With me.” 

And then of course it washes over Cas completely, because they are kind of _both_ dense sons of bitches about this stuff.. “And you and Sam both feel this way?” Cas asks hopefully, taking Dean's admission as a gesture of familial outreach. Well, it  _is_ , but it's not _just_  that. 

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Um,” Dean stumbles, caught off guard for a second. “Sam wants you here, too. But, uh,” he coughs, distracted and desperately trying to regain his composure and determination. “I do, especially. In a... special way.”  

Wow. 

“God, I suck at this,” Dean laughs breathlessly, shaking his head in self-admonishment. 

But then Cas put a hand again on his knee, like he'd done just hours before. Like he  _caught_ Dean, after Dean flung himself off that terrifying cliff of bared hearts. “I think you're doing pretty well,” he says, voice calm and even, a steady promise that he will _always_  catch Dean when he falls, if he can. Because that's what they do for each other. 

“Yeah?” Dean's voice catches in his throat, as he raises is head to find Cas' eyes, full of hope and something that for a long time now, Dean has come to think of as  _home_. 

“Yes,” Cas assures him, shifting closure on the bed. Their thighs are pressed close together,  and Dean kind of wants to break down and sob right now. 

“Dean, I—” Cas begins, rough voice full or renewed wonder. “I've known for a long time that there's no place I'd rather be than with you.” 

Dean's brain has trouble picking up from where it had short circuited right then. “Well, that. That's—” 

Cas' hand moves from Dean's knee up his thigh in a gesture of comfort that both has Dean aching in his chest and stirring in his jeans.    

“And I've known for even longer that I'm very much in love with you,” Castiel concludes. 

 And the force of it is so much that Dean doesn't even have a sputtered response to that one. So instead of make a fool of himself with half finished words, he kisses Cas instead. It's a nervous press of lips at first, but it quickly grows deeper, warmer as Cas' presses back, mouth answering Dean's wordless questions of  _“Really?”_  and  _“Are you sure?”_  with  _yes, yes,_  and _yes, always_. 

Dean doesn't say I love you back. Not right away. His mouth is too happily otherwise engage, but he's also had enough soul bearing for one night. 

But he will. He will because there will be tomorrow, and another tomorrow after that. And though the endless Night threatens to encroach upon them, Dean knows that at the very least, they will live to see another day. And they'll face it together.   

And though it doesn't sound like much, for Dean, it kinda is  _everything_.


End file.
